FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, in accordance with Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, completed his investigation into the state of broadband Internet inside of the United States. The overall progress report was positive, and the FCC is pushing forward with initiatives to help increase the availability of broadband.
The progress report showed that the number of users with broadband access increased to roughly 90 percent, a seven percent increase nationwide. Rural areas jumped up from just 47 percent of users with broadband access in 2013, to 61 percent in 2014. Although this is still not ideal, it does show considerable growth in a relatively short amount of time.
To further help spread broadband across the nation, the FCC signed agreements with multiple ISPs that insured these companies would invest over $1.5 billion in their networks by the end of 2020. The FCC has also agreed to help fund these initiatives by investing over $2.8 billion to connect schools and libraries with broadband connections in excess of 100 MB/s.
With the increased efforts of the FCC to connect all citizens of the United States with broadband-level Internet connections, we should expect to see these percentages continue to climb over the next few years.
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